


A World Elsewhere

by Ghostfriendly



Series: Fighter [4]
Category: A Midsummer Night's Dream - All Media Types, Goblin Slayer (Anime), Goblin Slayer (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Mecha, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe -Wild West, Better Than Canon, Cowgirl Position, Everyone Is Alive, Everyone is Dead, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Filicide, Foreplay, Healing Sex, Language Barrier, Patricide, Period-Typical Racism, Sharing a Bed, Teen Pregnancy, Threats of Violence, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2019-10-20 14:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17624270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostfriendly/pseuds/Ghostfriendly
Summary: AU shorts. They did not need to die.Chpt1: Goblinslayer AU. Rookies live.Chpt2: Goblinslayer/Midsummer Night's Dream. Everyone dies.Chpt3: Historical!AU Chinese Opium warChpt4:  Fantasy AU. Goblinslayer plays the villain.





	1. Imposter Syndrome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Shuang 'Susan' Lei, Harry Percy Fawkes and Ilsa Tresckow are Fighter, Warrior and Wizard respectively. Ainz the Lich King is indeed from Overlord, another series I dislike.

 

On the nights when Susan couldn’t sleep, Harry Fawkes had learnt to hold her fast and wait. His wife had laughed like sunrise, when they’d killed Ainz the Lich King. Bards called her smile the banner of heroes. Yet her tears, to him, were too accustomed a sight.

“Sorry..." She whispered into the pillow, "I’m an idiot. It’s been so long, since…”

“Shh, I’m the idiot, remember?” He shifted in the bed, pressing into her back and her thick dark hair “I got you into this awful job.”

“No, you believed in us, dear one. That it would be worth it. Even back then, when _children_ went out untrained in parties of four, like slaying goblins was a sick game.”

“Thank the gods that’s changed. We helped change it. You’re a hero, Susan Lei.”

She smiled bravely, squeezed his hand. Stared at the darkened wall of their fine little apartment.

“Never felt it. Not since our first quest. When poor Ilsa Tresckow died.”

“We….should have saved her. I’m sorry.”

“No, no…” Through her hard, scar-worn body, Harry felt the sobs, “If it had been you…I’m so, so glad it wasn’t you, Harry. Glad it wasn’t…me. We’re so lucky. So many wounded friends, so many lost. Every time I see the Sword Maiden, or those poor girls who were tortured– _if the monsters had taken me, I know I couldn’t have survived what they did!_ I'd never have fought again. I would have hung myself, a broken beggar, and that would be the story of Yip Lei’s daughter! I’m no hero. Every time we saved the world, I was an imposter.”

With the look he'd had when he'd killed the dragon, Harry was suddenly above Susan, looking her in the eye.

“Love, love, you could have got through it, you can’t know you wouldn’t!”

“How can you say I'd survive?” She still smiled, but her dark eyes were empty, “If I lost my honour, my strength, and you?”

“No. Susan, think of all the people you’ve saved! Your care and your smile have saved so many poor souls, even with this cursed lie still lodged in you! Don’t think about might-have-beens. Remember how you’ve worked, and fought, you’re a fighter, and that is the truth! The truth….the truth we’ve built and bled for. If we believe in ourselves we can be heroes...”

Susan quietly took hold of his ever-messy hair. Drew him down to her breasts.

“You always believed, you big idiot. We found out right away, the world we were born in was a heap of dung–but you never stopped believing in dragonslayers and stories, and you changed it. Gods only know where I’d be without you, Harry. You’re the real hero.”

“Well, _yeah_ but…argh…” Susan stopped twisting her husband’s ear and he forged on, “You’re the hero of all the greenhorns you hug and scold before their first deployment. Not me, you. No one has a heart like you, you’ve saved me a hundred times....you could kill me with your pinkie. You’re _you_ , and if that isn’t enough to be a hero, then dragonslayers and stories can get stuffed.”

They’d had the same talk many times, in bed or in the lobby of a palace. Some dragons took more slaying than others, but heroes fought down the little voice of fear. Harry wasn’t expecting the thoughtful look that crept into his wife’s eyes.

“I must have felt like I had something to prove. So many missions, councils to sort out this dungheap world, _and_ the martial arts school...I shouldn’t have taken so long to do this.”

“Susan, what–?”

Her smile was a little afraid, but fulsome with glory.  

“I think, dear one, I’m ready for us to make a baby.”


	2. Shadowlands

_“Well met, Schemers!_

_“For schemers, in truth, thee are. Cleave to the plan, the plan_ _. Say I should threaten the lives of brave adventurers three, where is the dull peasant, the fat merchant, the lovesick maiden, to spare them a tear? If your boldest young woman is stripped, ravished, and it is hidden in a dungeon from coward eyes, is it not called a commonplace part of life? Part of the plan. Your brutish, execrable plan! Oh, trust in thy plan, while still thee can_ _…yes, and wait till you get a load of me, hahahahaha…!”_

“What?”

The laughing man, little and ugly as a goblin, had vanished from the town square. Harry Fawkes shrugged, and headed back to the Inn, where the wizard Ilsa had joined his and Susan’s party earlier that evening. They were real adventurers, now. Strange and significant happenings were to be expected.   

* * *

 

The next day, the morning of their first quest, the Shadows came.

There were no more goblin slaying quests; the Shadows filed down their tunnels like ferrets, and killed the last one within a week. The civilised races had barely time to celebrate their unearned relief–or to wonder how Porcelains would learn A from B, without starter quests for two thirds to get killed on–when the Shadows finished the goblins and started to kill everything else.

They were faceless, voiceless, and implacable. Holy Light did not slow them, no blade touched them. A certain quiet man in armour did not fight them, understanding nothing but that his purpose had ended. Heroes and monsters fought the Shadows and died. The nobles and peasants and children who had always left anything like danger to the heroes simply died.

No mark on their bodies, no fuss. Those who had dignity died with it, those who had none without. No one had their dignity taken away. There were no survivors, in the end, to mourn or envy the dead. No pain, no shame, and the terror ended with life. Mastah Kurtz had dropped his bomb in the heart of darkness, to exterminate the brutes and end it all.

There were three survivors. When it came out that somehow they survived the Shadows, they were hailed as the heroes of the world. When it grew clear that the Shadows simply refused to harm them, they were almost lynched–but since the Shadow had come the Three had done nothing but fight them, and grown strong. Every Shadow they fought was a little stronger, just enough to challenge them, as if some alien power had twisted their world into a game.

“It’s not right…” Susan fell to her knees beside the little blonde Priestess. The dead girl’s cheeks were still covered in icy tears, “This sweet, caring girl, what did she do? What didn’t she do? She cared…!”

“Then it is better she died than lived to see this.” The wizard Ilsa’s face was pale, but her grip on Susan's arm was firm.

The Castle of Shadows filled the night sky above them. It had appeared in the Capital, a week after the Shadows. The approach was a carpet of dead heroes.

“Then, if we had to live, and see this, what in the world did _we_ do?” Susan’s dark eyes grew hollow. Several times, their plight had overwhelmed, and she had gone under–but Ilsa spoke to her firmly, Harry spoke gently and kissed her hair. She stood again.

“Okay then,” Harry’s voice was like burning iron, “Let’s end this.”

He wore Artefact plate mail he had looted, and held a runic longsword. Something buried in his heart sprang with joy that he was going to save the world–even if his two comrades were all that was left.

Before the Shadows came, the little laughing Wanderer had appeared, in every city and village the Three knew of, over the course of a day. Said his piece about Schemers and tears, vanished. The only light that had kept Harry, Susan and Ilsa sane was that world’s last heroes should find the devil and kill him. That the nightmare would finally end.

* * *

 

There were Shadows, great and small, deathtraps and mazes. The Three had needed to learn their trade quickly, and they had; but in the end they had to pass through because there would be no one else.

Finally, they reached the great hall, and faced the little Wanderer, the prince of Shadows. He grinned with all his sharky teeth, and twiddled long fingers like twigs in his beard. The Three got within ten paces of him, then Harry spoke the only word they had.   

“Why?”

“To make us a statement, mayhaps.” The merry little man, the Immortal Goblin, grinned down from a heap of burning money. “There be some that wish the world turned upside down.”

“Well, you’ve killed everyone in the world, but I fear you’ve failed to express your point clearly,” Ilsa spoke coldly, eyes burning through her spectacles, “Perhaps you could spell it out?”

“Oho, my brave maid…” The Immortal Goblin grinned as only a _real_ goblin can, “For the one, I have avenged me on those witless earthworms, usurpers of the goblin name. For the other…but for this good fellow’s pranks, know thee what had befallen three young questers, foolish-brave?”

He opened a window in air, and showed them how their first goblin slaying quest would have ended. Harry’s sword fell from his hand. The goblin laughed and laughed.

“We didn’t want this…” Susan finally forced out the words, “WE NEVER WOULD HAVE WANTED THIS!”

“Oh, my brave Fighter, poor Lucretia, for whom the world was banished. Boadicea's daughter, for whom this rapist's world was ravaged–humans never get what they want!” The Goblin of Pook's Hill rocked back and forth on his burning throne, “Not even my present employer, that artless, long-winded fellow that wouldst slaughter a world to show them ravishment is wrong! For my part, I think it _boring_ , and this is so much fun!”

“SHUT UP!” Susan roared out her lungs.

Harry broke the silence.

“It was a dunghill world, but the people…they were people. I’d rather die nameless in that cave, if it would bring back everyone who died."

"Harry..." Susan took his hand and clung to it.

"Susan. What those things did you you, I can’t, I won’t let you…!”

“I…think I could. For that little blonde girl, for our friends back home, I’ll fight.”

She remember the one night when Harry had snapped and almost despaired, but she had been there. She had given herself to the heroic idiot she’d always loved. Whatever hell they plunged into, she had to believe that would always be real.   

("Oh yes, gentle reader, my employer shippeth Fighter x Warrior rather more than somewhat. And by Oberon, thou dost not know long-winded until..." The Three had no idea who the Goblin was talking to.)

“Alright them.” Ilsa snapped, “It makes more sense for only three to die–and you would have saved the world, as you always wanted. I’m willing to die as well, if it brings back everyone else.”

“In truth, forsooth…” The Immortal Goblin breathed, “Thou art truly heroes.”

A profound silence followed. When the Immortal Goblin started to pick his teeth, the Three realised that this would end the way they’d expected after all.

“I can almost imagine,” Susan muttered, as she dropped into the crouching tiger stance, “That everything will be right, if I can only punch in your face.”

“In truth, forsooth,” The Merry Wanderer of the Night twinkled and grinned, “It will.”

Ilsa thrust out her staff, the words of anti-magic rang out–but something appeared on her chest that smoked, ticked and exploded. Blew her to pieces, as the Goblin clapped his hands.

Harry had his sword again. With Susan barely ahead, he leapt at the Immortal Goblin, with a battle cry that was a scream.

The Goblin flicked his long fingers. Harry’s arms grew long and hard, his scream died as his armour burst from within–a huge oak tree was rooted in the hall where he had been.

Susan felt teeth growing, her limbs bending. Her _ears–_ whatever mad plan was seeing her changing into a rabbit, she only knew she would be living on lettuce, and everyone would be dead, unless she moved and struck and killed.

It took exactly as much willpower as she had, but she had to wring out every drop she possessed. She cried out for every forgotten hero, thrust all her Ki straight down her arm, and threw a punch at the Immortal Goblin’s pumpkin grin that would have made boulders crack.

He twisted easily aside. Then he was at her ear, whispering the words that would redeem every world and make everything right;

 

_“If we shadows have offended; think but this, and all is mended. Think on this weak and idle theme…it did but happen in a dream!”_

 

After a moment, Susan laughed. Then she kicked the Immortal Goblin across the hall and out of the window–

–and then she woke up, again. In a wood between the worlds, a space within spaces. The dressing room of the multiverse.

She got up. First she would find Ilsa, and Harry. Then she would punch the idiot whose story it had been. Make him feel as if she had, if that was impossible. After that, there were worlds elsewhere. Enough stories for a dozen lives, full of love and heroics. World enough and time, to forget the nightmares.

Elsewhere, the imaginary world that Puck had redeemed, the world of the Goblinslayer, drifted indifferently on.   

* * *

 

_A/N: The rape of Lucretia (as related by Puck's old friend Shakespeare), brought an end to the Kingdom of Rome. Boadicea's daughters were raped by the Romans, which, among other things, led their mother to have about 80,000 people slaughtered in a very brutal fashion. The rape of the Levite's Concubine, in the book of Judges, (which I didn't have time to mention, along with Dogsville and Pirate Janni) led to the slaughter of almost the whole tribe of Benjamin by the other eleven tribes. Something similar, on paper. for Fighter, if her own world continues indifferent to her fate, strikes me as a righteous, decent statement. If Puck seems a bit OP, remember he's from Shakespeare, Kipling and Neil Gaiman; any Japanese Light Novel is a dead flea between his toes._


	3. The Dawn like Thunder

A pack of dirty yellow goblins. Private Fawkes, 77th East Middlesex regiment, had thought little more of the Chinese enemy before he shipped out, though the sergeants had roared a lot more about foot binding and the thousand cuts. He hadn’t thought _anything_ of what pikes and ancient cannons could do to a British soldier with his Sinder-Enfield. The flat-faced little fellows had hardly shown any fight at all, as redcoats had taken and burnt their city. The damp and heat were more tenacious foes.

So Harry Fawkes, on a routine patrol of a busy Canton street, pushed back his pith helmet and wiped the sweat from his messy hair. As the proverbial half-brick sailed out of the quietly gathering mob and knocked him down.

He barely perceived the shouts, or the rush of grim, staring faces. He felt the foot crush his ankle–it could have been his own squadmate’s boot–and Kipling hammered his head into the dark.

 _When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,_  
_And the women come out to cut up what remains,_  
_Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains_  
_An' go to your Gawd like a soldier, soldier,_  
_So-oldier of the Queen!_

 

-0-

 

A woman was smiling at him, when he half-woke with a pounding head. A girl, really–she looked younger than his seventeen–with a pigtail she could sit on, dark eyes like a jewel cave. She was wearing a ragged white tunic and a yellow scarf. She had no flaying knife he could see.

Despite his head feeling like a foundry at the bottom of the sea, Harry realised quite sharpish that he was lying on rags and bamboo in a junkroom, or shed. The noise from outside was of the city–the Chinese city. The girl pushed him down before he could even begin to get up.

“ _Tsai gwai!_ Foreign devil.” She pointed at him, then gestured at the city past the door, “They people, much much angry. They–“

Frenzied stabbing motions at her own chest. Once Harry had woozily noticed it was a _very_   shapely chest, he finally awoke to his situation–as the missionaries say–and flopped back with a groan.

The girl gently pushed some water between his lips. With thirst seizing his throat again, a moment later, Harry talked to take his mind off his ankle and ribs and everything else that hurt. 

“Bloody mess. Sergeant’s going to kill me. Friends should’ve bloody pulled me out. Argh…you must’ve saved my life, Miss. Thank you."

"Mm?"

"You SA–VED me! THA–NK YOU!”

The girl cocked her head. Harry settled for smiling at her. Her smile in return was the warmest and clearest he could imagine. 

“Why, you…why would you save me? Foreign devil? Burn your city, push all that opium. I could use some of that bloody opium right now.” His ankle hurt so much, he could barely think. He stared up helplessly at the girl’s face, silent as the moon, tried once more, “Why…what makes you smile, like that? It’s…beautiful...”

Shuang Lei couldn’t have answered him in words if she’d understood. Through the years she’d lived in the city since her parents’ death, surviving by whatever reckless adventure could be found, there had been more to bring a grimace than a grin. Still, she watched the noisy, ignorant foreign devil close his big eyes in restless sleep.

She had saved him, but it was her who felt safety and peace at his side. She didn’t know why, she did not know how in heaven and earth she could keep him, safe–but this man from a strange world of devil and magic had fallen before her. All she knew was that she could not let him go.

 

-0-

 

Harry realised quickly that the girl was very strong, for a female, as she shifted him round his sickbed over the following days, and coolly assisted him with embarrassing necessities. From outside the shed, he often heard the yowls and slaps of the funny Chinese boxing he’d naturally heard of, through never desired or expected to meet with. He wondered in his many idle hours if she was a student–some kind of warrior woman from a secret order, sworn to protect the weak. A thief or a street tough seemed more likely, however. She often returned to the shed with bruises and skinned knuckles, as well as the day’s dry rice to spoon down his throat. She always did a little blessing with her hand over the food, and Harry chipped in with what little prayer he could make up.

 Harry knew the ways friendless children survived in Whitechapel and Lambeth; he couldn’t fail to see that the girl had been through great hardship. She smiled at him every morning, though, except for when he remembered to dig out the few coins he’d had on him.

“ _Tsai!_ No money.” She looked away. Harry signed; he had begun to suspect that ‘ _Tsai_ ’ was ‘idiot’”

“If there’s anything I can do for you? On my honour, as a soldier?” No reaction. He shook his head. “Alright, love. Just glad you’re not slicing me up, or sticking red-hot needles in funny places!”

_< <“Idiot. I’ve done nothing for you worth payment, I don’t feel that way…I was worried for you, idiot! I couldn’t even bring a doctor for you with his needles, and I know nothing of acupuncture. I could only sit while your fever broke, pace with you, as your leg healed...but it did, in the end. You certainly are a strong devil. Even if your nose looks so silly.”>>_

Harry naturally couldn’t understand a word, but his grin was from the heart. He thought of her Cantonese as sharp, strong music, and he could tell when she was worried for him–though he might never understand why. Though he had finally realised from her smile, it was more than a duty.

_< <”You can walk with a crutch. Your people ended the riots over a week ago. You must go back to them. To your friends, your white women…though they look too frail to ever split wood, or lift water, with their soft hands. You know, I fought with three robbers once? In the south market. I didn't win...but I fought. I survived.>>_

"Hey, love, what's wrong? I don't...I'll...whatever it is..." Harry touched her shoulder. Churning with fury to see the pain in her eyes, beyond him, he could only rest his hand there.  

_< <"Why did your people, you devils, come to fight? Why throw our world into chaos? You have so much, but you left your home-and still, you still seem so lonely. Never at peace. Hey…do you want to go back? I don’t want you to ever go back....”>>    _

He didn’t even know her name, or how she lived. How any of the Chinese millions lived, beyond this hidden cage. What they thought–why their children smiled. He didn’t even know why Parkes and Palmerston had sent him over the black ocean to a vast, voiceless country that had to burn. The Chinese his friends had shot died crying out like humans. The sergeants had screamed he had to throw the torches, burn the houses, never check for families still inside…

Dreams of fire racked his sleep that night. When he cried and woke, she was gripping his soaking hand, at his side.

“Why? Why, love?” He whispered, “Why me? Why you, so…?”

Shuang could have told him, if he could have understood, about the wheel of life in the demon’s hands. In another life, long ago and far away, they might have found each other. Lost. Gone through unknowable space, uncounted empty years, to the moment he kissed her hand and she fell upon his lips.

She laughed as he surged up against her, from the sickbed, her flesh awakening his. Threw her tunic away, gripped his slim body with her legs. She smiled, held his head on her breasts, called him her child. Cried out as he pushed her down and took her, called him her devil. Wept for joy and clung to his back, after they had finished. Called him her lover and her best friend, the husband of her soul.

She wasn’t Harry’s first girl, but it felt like his first _breath_. As if they had escaped the shipwreck of a world, as if they had fought for their lives, and souls and innocence.

“Love. You…”

She didn’t understand. It was a small mercy, because he couldn’t stay. Sleeping with a few natives was quite cricket, but you followed your regiment, in the army, and the ones that ran got a wall and a blindfold at dawn. They would be shipping out in less than a month, for some other colonial contretemps in a distant land, and he couldn't stay or he would never go. 

 

-0-

 

Dr Ilsa Tresckow had done what she could for the bleeding, dull-eyed Chinese girl who had stumbled into Canton’s little Lutheran mission, three months ago now. Shuang had been silent about what had happened, but there was violence of every sort abroad. Girls tortured in the brothels; escaping, to be beaten and cast out by their own families. Opium addicts killing for their next fix. Persecution of converts, and any luckless associate of foreign devils, whenever the shame of defeat proved too much to bear.

The girl worked hard enough to earn her keep; she simply had no spirit or interest in anything. The missionaries had taught her about the Grace of God, and she had accepted all they’d said…but Ilsa knew from personal experience that acceptance was not faith. Shuang was as lost and damned as a medical missionary who’d lied for her ticket to China, burning to gain exotic knowledge, rather than preach to the sick before they could have their medicine. Sometimes she seemed in hell already; sometimes China seemed a place of entire darkness.

Shuang had been bright enough the day before; sometimes a glimmer of natural joy flared up in her gloom, to die out. When Ilsa found her gone from her bed, the river was the place that she ran to–it was far from the first time.

Five minutes past midnight. Shuang stood on the wooden bridge above the black Pearl River. When a young man with brown eyes and no red coat walked out of the darkness. Saw her.

“…Love. I looked for you, the embassies, the missions…I found you. This is a miracle–!”

Shuang turned to look at Harry; he stepped back. She put her hands on her stomach, in a gesture he could never have mistaken.

“Devil-baby. Inside. _You leave!_.”

Harry stared at her, stared at the river. It hit him like an avalanche, drove him to his knees. When Dr Tresckow found them, he was clinging to Shuang’s waist. Begging her again, again, never, _never_ throw her life away–though she seemed quite occupied for now with beating him over the head.

_< <“Shuang! Get away from that odd man.”>>_

“You…you speak Chinese!?” ‘That odd man’ sounded as if she could summon chariots of fire. 

“Of course! Enough to live in China.”

“Miss…Frau…please, tell her I love her. I’ve deserted the army. Done a bloody runner. I should’ve never gone back, never left her, but my friends, bloody _England..._ I thought two little people couldn’t fight the world. But they were going to ship us to India last month, the Mutiny. They told us we’d wipe out the black rapists, _exterminate_ them. Nogood rebel but a dead rebel, but it's all lies! I know they're human beings, like her! I still have nightmares, about the burning. I told them and they flogged me. My mates called me a darkie lover. Now, it’s a firing squad for Harry Fawkes, if they ever find me.

"Tell her I love her. I'm sorry. I'm a fool, but I'll make this all right. The whole world might want us dead, but we can fight them, together...heck, if she saved me she can do bloody anything, she's more than the world. I won't leave her alone, never again.”

Ilsa relayed every word she could. Shuang reached out, hit him once more, lightly. Stroked his hair.

“Sorry, love.” He smiled against her hand, like a bad puppy, "I just rushed off, rushed back. Don't know how we'll live, or where. But it's a big country, bloody big! I heard of runners in India, set up as warlords for some prince or sultan, ended up richer than kings! Ah, we can dream, but this is real, right here. Together, right where we belong."   

Shuang pulled Harry up from his knees, pressed her face to his chest. Held his hand over their child in her womb. The dawn came up like thunder in her smile.

Ilsa knew the right thing to do. Sent the deserter back to his fate, the child to an orphanage, the harlot back to the streets. But she saw Shuang clinging to her lover with all her considerable strength. Gazing on him as if they’d been raised from the dead.

She rubbed her spectacles, realised she was smiling for silly joy. The mercy of God could be very strange. Perhaps it had taken a voyage as far as China, and a miracle, for the missionary to believe. 

Perhaps they would break up brothels and opium dens together, as many as they could. Perhaps military advisers to some warlord, with Harry another Rajah Brooke or Pahari Wilson. Perhaps missionaries themselves; they had enough to thank God for. Perhaps an ordinary couple, somewhere in China, just as long as their luck held. They knew they were crazy but their world was insane, and they were ready to strike out for another adventure. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: 1857-1858 were the years of the first phase of the 2nd Opium War, and the Indian Mutiny. This major rebellion was ongoing after the British quickly captured Canton in China, possibly burning some of the city; troops could very possibly have shuffled from the Chinese sideshow to one of the most notorious atrocities in colonial history. The view taken by the British of the ‘dark-skinned rapists’ that they massacred to the point of exhaustion, (when they rested, after which they kept right on with the killing), has a great deal to say about goblinslayer, and the ‘always chaotic-evil’ fantasy race as a monument to historic prejudice and hypocrisy. The 19th Century British army, with all the flogging, disease and unreliable commanders, had high desertion rates, and still has the worst record for underage soldiers in the first world. Plenty deserted for love, some certainly got rich as mercenaries for Asian warlords; a great many ended up dead. There have been enough operas on the tragic Asian babymama theme that a heroine who prefers blows to songs might not be too inappropriate. It’s a wild and improbable melodrama, still like it better than canon. Priestess would have been a better fit for the missionary, but I decided to keep contamination from the original series to a minimum. I banish them all; there is a world elsewhere.     


	4. The Manslayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Once again, Susan Lei is Fighter, Harry P. Fawkes is Warrior, Ilsa Tresckow is Wizard.
> 
> My headcannon name for Goblinslayer is Ahab Grey. Are there any Life of Brian fans in the audience? Read with attention.
> 
> The forehead carving trick derives from Dellyn Goblinslayer, from the webcomic Goblins. Every fan of Goblinslayer should read it.

She had made a mistake. Bound hand and foot, goblins dancing around her in the firelight, grinning as they held up the shreds of her riding leathers…that much was inescapable.

Blood matting her hair, Greenskin warpaint flared like hell-sparks in her blurring eyes. She hadn't known she'd gone too far out. She knew nothing of her party, her friends, if they were still in the tunnels, or safe, they had to be safe…but she'd had no  _show_ , no chance to fight. Slow slicing, every cackle slid terror through her naked body, didn't stop. They would write the only story of Yip Lei's daughter in spittle, blood and shame.

She'd at least thought she wouldn't be raped. Over a dozen Rangers, almost all men, were shot from ambush, or bushwhacked and flayed to death, each year, and that was 'acceptable losses'. But the American people would not have stood for a single female Ranger entering a goblin cave, if outrage and ravishment were a biological possibility.

Except certainty did not exist on the frontier; she been wrong about knowing that. As a lanky Greenskin aimed another kick at her bleeding backside, the man in the wooden mask shoved it away. The big male, warding the runts off from his virgin prize.

Ahab Girty. The Manslayer, the pale savage. Ranger parties ambushed and massacred, homesteads butchered, babies torn from their mothers' arms and crushed underfoot. The broken torture victims with names carved in their foreheads–GREENHORN, WEAKLING, FOOL–a label for all who were worthless because he could kill them.

Not even  _American newspapers_  could paint him black enough, Susan knew this. Though weak and dry with terror, she tried to spit. The mask was a death's-head, his eye glowed like a witch-light, as his hand settled on her hair.

"Your people built the railways, do you remember?" A rough frontier accent, but a calm, quiet voice, "You appear full-blooded, but an underpaid white railworker most likely raped your semi-conscious mother, while Chinatown burned. Your father, beaten to death by an inebriated navvy, who walked free from court because homicide is the killing of a human being."

"…monster. My father was strong…"

"My father was weak; he was a  _human_." He struck her head against the ground again; she moaned and the goblins cheered, "These are facts, the truth. These monsters, as you call them, were driven from their tribal lands by humans, the ranchers and miners. When they fought back, or when they were simply in the way, human guns and magical plagues killed them in thousands. Why do think they live in caves? Who are the monsters?"

"You, you kill children, innocents…" Susan searched for any victimhood in starved, eager goblin faces, saw none. The Manslayer sighed.

"The only innocent, good humans are the ones strangled at birth and put in a hole. Humans sent you, with months of training, against goblins who are as one with the night. A  _woman_ , stepping proudly into danger, out of your place. They would have raped you before long, the humans. My mother, my sister, raped to death, as I hid…by HUMANS! No reason. It is not right. Exterminate the brutes. Cleanse the world. This will be mercy."

An instrument of death, so mad and inhuman he  _couldn't_  rape her. Just draw his knife and begin to carve, the bait for an ambush that might put a patrol of shocked Rangers in the ground. Susan could see it, she had seen the bodies; she would lose everything. The Manslayer had made the first quick cuts, on Susan's brow, of VICTIM–when a wall of fire sprang up over her body. He stepped back, ever practical.

The Rangers also knew something of shock and awe. They charged into the cavern firing and screaming like monsters, the death of every goblin in their eyes. There was only Susan's party–ever astute, the Manslayer shouted that it was five reckless fools, without backup–but goblins shrank, scuttling off down tunnels, pulling their dead or wounded friends.

Too close for guns, the Rangers drew swords on the goblins that stood. Savage little things, full of hate, as the humans savagely hacked in their rage. Ilsa's fireball didn't even the numbers, but more goblins ran. Harry Fawkes lost his prized stetson in the ruck, lost his sabre in a ribcage. Killed the next greenskin with feet and fists–would have happily crushed it with his teeth. A goblin stuck a knife in his leg, but Ollendorf, the Ranger at his side, hauled him up with one arm. The charge towards Harry's childhood friend, bloodied and choking in the ring of fire, barely slowed.

Ever implacable, Manslayer reached into the flames–Ilsa shut them off, before he could drag Susan though them. He raised his knife, but the party Captain–the Goblinhunter, in his iron mask–put a bullet in him.

(Too many, on every side of every war. Slayers, terrorists, killers called heroes. Living for their killcounts, tilting at nightmare windmills. Lost in fantasy worlds where every infidel, raghead or Indian must die, invincible in insensibility)

"I'd tell you to give it up," Captain Ahab Grey, the Goblinhunter, pronounced, "If you were still human. But the only good goblin–"

In the moment's bloodlust, Susan bleeding before them, Harry, Ilsa and Ollendorf roared out the countersign. The Manslayer's burning eyes (as he fled, ever the survivor), promised death to every human. And death screams rose over the senseless shouts, as Harry fell down beside Susan. Covered her with his arms, held her because he meant never to lose her again.

 

-0-

 

Their Colonel Ballou had resignation papers ready for Susan–broken as she felt, she was livid. He would have told Harry to bear up and be a man, if he had been captured and scarred; his fellow Rangers would have stood him drinks.

As it was, everyone who knew what had been done to her, or thought they did, glanced with pity or contempt, as they rode back into town from the prairie. She would have hit something, except she was too weak to fight. Weak, stupid girl, disgracing her uniform and her family. It wasn't true, she had just made a mistake–but three of her party had been wounded, one badly enough to be discharged. That would never go away, even when she grovelled at their feet, not even asking forgiveness. They all gave it, they all said it had been worth it–they knew she would earn this.

Two drunken town goblins grovelled to her in street; if she had not returned safely, they babbled, all of their brothers for miles would have been lynched. Ollendorf made to drive them away with kicks; Susan held him back, then quickly left the greenskins behind.

Captain Grey told her tersely what mistakes she had made, she would die if she made them again. Then he went back to searching for ways to kill goblins, in the knotholes of the barracks wall. Ilsa had saved Susan's yellow scarf from the cavern, her father's scarf–Susan hugged her so hard she knocked off her glasses.

"Sorry! I mean,  _thank you_ , partner…"

"It was worth some little trouble," Ilsa hid her eyes and her smile, "To see Brunhilda."

Susan asked her about Brunhilda. The Valkyrie, the warrior woman, imprisoned in the ring of fire. The hero, Siegfried, who had never known the meaning of fear until he saw her naked body. Because nothing was fearful but losing her, through death, or his own unworthiness.

 

-0-

 

The town had one flea-bitten hotel; Harry Fawkes checked into it that weekend. Threw his headband over a chair, lay on the mattress and waited, until Susan came in. Wearing a plain white blouse and a skirt instead of leathers, shutting the door behind her.

"Harry...you know me." She began, "We've know each other a long time. I'm not some damsel for you to rescue, or some prize for the great big hero, that isn't what this is about..."

"Susan, this was a mistake. You're still in shock, this isn't the right time. I didn't watch your back, I was an idiot..."

"Yeah, but you're a good guy, Harry. You saved me. It's stupid, I just feel I've got to do something reckless too…for the man I love." No turning back. Burning under her skin, trying to slow her breaths, her fingers touched his, "I probably am in shock. You'd better get that famous courage together quick."

Holding the girl he'd fought with, cried with, found, Harry looked very young and slight, but his touch was firmly loving. He searched her eyes, made certain, this was what she wanted. Where they both belonged, forever.

Susan finally let out a breath. Her bosom moved, and then he was kissing her. Pressing her tush back against the wall. She bit back into the kiss, pushed him towards the bed, pulling off her dress, ripping his shirt off. Her linen underslip stayed on.

"Susan, love, is it…?"

"It's fine. I don't want to be naked–not this time. I just want to be with you, Harry, now and always." Her fingers clung to his tousled head, as he enjoyed her chest, "Mm. Just like a boy, going straight for  _them_. Didn't you always stare when I wasn't looking, and dream about this?"

Harry smiled, moving to her collarbone; he ran his tongue along the sensitive skin. His fingers, down to the bottom of her spine. She gripped his hand at their side.

"Didn't you?"

"Mmph! Might have thought about it. Mmm, oh..." His mouth was busy for a while, before he came back to her lips, his eyes back to hers.

"I dreamt of slaying dragons, even  _thunderbirds_ , but this…my knees are shaking, love. Always loved you, but I never dreamt–"

Then his fingers trailed down her stomach, and in pleasure, love and surprise, she was closer to him than she'd dreamt possible. Her long hair danced, as she tossed her head and gnawed at her lip.

"–AH! Don't stop, Harry. Don't you dare stop, or I'll break your nose!" He leaned in to kiss her, again. He moved her hand down, toward himself–between quick, hot breaths, Susan laughed. "My man. You know what you want...and you can take it, my hero…"

"Have to be," Harry gasped, as she touched him, "Have to be stronger, better. Protect you, all our friends, make it all right. I promise, I'll be your hero, I won't let you down, and never–!"

"Never change, Harry. Never leave. Now–less talk!"

She pushed him down on the bed, pulled her underslip down. Held his hand over her heart, as she rode him like a Valkyrie. 

Afterwards, they lay together glowing with love, soaked in each other. He traced the magically healed scar on her forehead. V.

"Don't say you're sorry," Susan whispered, "Thank you. Anyway, it looks like…"

"…a pure white crane, spreading her wings?"

"…Vee for victory? Victorious?" They'd surprised each other (again and again...) at the same time.

"Huh? I thought you'd like...?"

"I thought you'd think…?"

They laughed together. Susan clung to Harry's fingers again, kissed his hand.

"Love…we're so much stronger than that sad old monster. We can be whoever we want to be."

 

-0-

 

It was four years before they got their Manslayer. He knew every track and tunnel, a child of the night. There was nothing in him but survival and death.

He was a tough monster, but for four years the Rangers tracked his ambushes. Mowed down goblin raid parties, beat the hideouts of the dreaded chief out of their little bodies. Susan didn't enjoy it, but more and more people were dying; it had to be done. Every homestead they reached, they held back the savages until the cavalry came; but too many they didn't reach, and the most terrible day of all…

Finally, the Manslayer was stretched out in his gore at their feet. Harry put a bullet in his other kneecap, for safety; he barely groaned. The shot echoed over the plain and the empty sky. Susan gripped Harry's hand, forced herself to look. In their moment of triumph, their faces were bleak.

"…know…what's so good about goblins?" The Manslayer gasped, face still hidden, "They're honest. They dance, they fight, they hunt…they raised me, after your hypocrisy turned my stomach. My mother. My sister…"

"Yeah, shut up about them," Harry's voice was flat as iron, "Honest gobbo? Didn't you become the Manslayer because Girty sounds a stupid name?"

No jokes, no excuses He had killed Rangers, soldiers and countless innocents. Poor big dumb Reeder, riddled with knives and bullets until he fell. Captain Grey, finally at rest from war and pain. Ilsa Treckow, a week after Ollendorf had said that he loved her. All for his crazed delusion that humans were evil monsters–when the real, true monsters were only humans like him.

"You couldn't even protect your woman from me," The Slayer hissed, "I am legend, you are nothing–"

Harry bent down, and stared into burning eyes. Speeches had always been his greatest weapon.

"No. We're going to kill you and make you nothing; throw your body out for the crows. Kill your goblins, until they curse your foul little soul. You will not be a legend, no kind of hero; we will wipe out your madness and your memory, like a vile disease. And then autumn will come with its yellow moon, and I will make love to my wife. Then spring will come with its waving green grass, and our children will grow and learn. Then summer will come, with its shimmering heat, and maybe the races will learn to live in peace, because you will see none of that–you will be dead, dead,  _dead_  you gopher-headed, stupid-looking, murdering son of a gun!"

"I'll see you in hell. Susan Lei–"

She looked away, as Harry blew his brains out.

She knew. She knew, killing the sad old monster made nothing right. Brought no one back, couldn't change the thing they'd done…but she still clung to her brave, wonderful man, mourned for her true friend Ilsa, and rode back to the little wooden house they shared. To try to do something other than killing.

 

-0-

 

Twelve years later, on the morning of the last day of Colonel Harry Fawkes, he left their bed in early morning before Susan woke. Wrapped in the sheets, she touched the patch of heat he'd left. Her passionate hero–she couldn't help smiling–but a hero's work was his passion, as well as her. Not enough Rangers, too many threats, even if the goblins quietly rotted in their caves these days.

First she moved to baby Ilsa's crib and held her. Gave her a nipple to drink and gazed on her downy head as she prayed. Though the town pastor would not have approved, she lit a joss stick at her father's shrine; begged his forgiveness that she was too busy for morning tai chi.

Then she put on her gingham dress and apron, in the townhouse that was smaller than they could have afforded; they could help the weak almost as much by charity as they ever had by battle. She woke up Jim and Will by throwing herself on their bed, and tickling until they tried to push her off.

"RAH! I'm a huge, savage  _wendigo_ , and if you don't get up, and eat your grits–!"

"Then our Ma's gonna come, and tan your hide!"

(She wished a little it were Pa; but Harry was more the hero to the reaches of the nation than his household. She would still have followed him into hell, but wallpaper, groceries and the home he'd given her were Susan's kingdom, and the kids knew it)

Perse, their eldest, watched the squirming over the bed as if she wished she could pile in. Ilsa started bawling for attention, and Susan rushed to take her up again, before she and Perse made breakfast and the boys went through their morning exercises before school. Both of them wanted to be rangers.

She kissed them, watched them down the street. She told them, Pa might be home early, and their eyes lit up…but the last day drew to an end, and he did not come home. He'd stayed all night at the barracks before, too often, she was ready to clip his ear when he came back, but Harry had not reached the barrack when he met the boy in the wooden mask, in the street.

"My name is the Manslayer. You killed my father. Die."

The gun cracked; Harry didn't even conceive of drawing his own. He stared at the savage mask of  _Susan's child–his son?_ –and almost smiled with his old hopeful grin. Then he thought of Susan, his children, and wept in the dirt where he bled out.

 

-0-

 

They had made a mistake. Their first night together, the second time they made love, her thighs had held him inside her. Four months later, she took leave from the Rangers to 'recover from what had happened'. She gave birth in an outhouse, in a hamlet where no one knew her name. Left her first child with a kind looking old couple, who tried not to look at her like a selfish whore.

She waited a year to tell Harry. He was a good man, he would be a great hero, and one mistake would not derail his dreams; she would make sure of it. And her?

She could not stay with her child; she had to go back to the fight. She would be called a weak woman, a broken shell, no hero, if she was stripped and marked by monsters, and never heard from again. Her father's spirit would curse her, and she would despise herself...she despised herself. She left her child behind, to go and be a hero. Put on a brave smile, every day. Prayed every night to the white man's God, who she had heard forgave; she was sorry. She was a monster. But she would not leave the fight, even if it dragged her down to hell.

Two years later, the Rangers did not reach that hamlet in time. Goblins wiped it out, burning, flaying or crucifying all that lived in their fury. She did not find the old couple, or her baby. She wanted to die, hang until dead as she deserved, but Harry was there. His hopeful, impossible smile through their pain; things would get better. They could still make it right, if they tried.

They had saved the country. He'd given her their wonderful family. She had dared to hope that God had been merciful...in truth, in spite of sufferings, He had. Fourteen years, so much glory and joy. Before their sin, their mistake, finally fell upon their heads.

Upon her son's head. She hadn't recalled that goblin spore buds grew slowly, so the goblins snatched away children, mostly boys, from the places they destroyed. Goblins had taken her child, with her Asian face. Raised him in the wilderness, on the stories of their hero, the Manslayer. Who had held his mother down, naked, before her child had been born. A natural mistake. He had believed the Manslayer was his father, but he had killed his father. Thrown his mother down on their cold bed, in silent, blank eyed despair.

She finally got up. Sent the children to stay with friends, put on her old uniform. Left, to find the misbegotten.

 

-0-

 

Two years later, Susan Lei faced her eldest son, across a mound of goblin bodies. His leg was broken. She had told him who his father had been. Almond eyes glared from the mask, hatred and pain.

"Mother. Why did you leave me? Your child..."

"My son..." Her hands reached out, touched his face, "I have other children. But no one in this world like HIM!"

And she snapped the Manslayer's neck. Held his body that seemed so pitiful and innocent. Cried and screamed and prayed.

She would have hung herself then, slain the last monster, but there were the children. She prayed with the despair of lost strength. Found the hope of God, and she could smile for them again. A mask for her pain, like the mask of Slayers. But for her children, she would be whatever hero she had to be.

When her children were grown, she rode away again. Wandered the plains, saving the innocent and slaying monsters. Wearing a nun's habit, because God had saved her from the impossible pit, and there was no man left for her in the world. The people called her 'Mother Susan' and she bore it. She smiled only rarely, but it was beautiful to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Simon Girty was an 18th century white American who lived among the Native Americans. He apparently preferred their culture to the civilised society that viewed him and the 'Indians' much as GS and co view the goblins. It would be interesting, if the character at all interested me, to reinvent Goblinslayer as an 'Indian hunter' such as Melville describes in 'The Confidence Man'. A frontiersman, massacring every Indian he can find because a single warparty killed and raped his family. Such men existed, and were even called heroes. Once again, I can only see a real life Goblinslayer as a racist serial killer, for example, or an Islamic terrorist killing the infidels who he believes to be irredeemably evil. Goblinslayers are the villains of the real world, and the goblins only exist in their poisonous fantasies.
> 
> Mother Sarah is an old manga by the writer of Akira (What more need I say? Better than Goblinslayer). The titular heroine is something like Mad Max played by Schwarzenegger, if Arnie was a beautiful woman. Her backstory involves repeated gang rape, and it is mentioned exactly once in the manga. No angst, no PTSD, she simply steamrolls over it. She doesn't get flashbacks when her friends or her are assaulted, she just calmly punches the man to death. She is a hero we need, she's Fighter's hero, and now Fighter is Mother Susan, along with so much more.


End file.
